CAC Math Subcommittee Meeting Agenda - 3-10-2015
Attendance: Suzanne King, Julie Lessley, Shannon Andrews, Nicol Nickolas-Mobley, Heather Jones, Bryan Swistak, James Judziewicz, Steve Behar, Edith Pineda, Lorraine Johnson.
* Textbook Adoption – continuing discussion
Current piloting teachers will need to do the evaluation sheet (coming out soon) and materials will need to be picked up. However, CPM materials can remain at sites until the end of the school year.
Piloting will continue next year starting in October (2nd trimester). Piloting teachers are expected to pilot a different publisher than they did this year, or at least two different options within the two year window. There was concern expressed about students who have had CPM and will then experience Big Ideas. The concern is that these students will experience a much less rigorous course with Big Ideas. However, some teachers believe that Big Ideas has plenty of rigor for students. Not all teachers want to pilot all options. Some teachers think that they were told they could pilot CPM for two years. Steve Behar will look into this. Concern was also expressed by the piloting teachers as to what materials/textbook they would use when they are not piloting next year. It is possible they could use the interactive notebooks rather than the currently adopted textbook we have. An email from Shannon came out asking what teachers wanted to pilot the modules next year.
* Course Description Writing – CCSS
There was much discussion about placement tests to determine which students would qualify for advanced math courses. Decisions are needed by the counselors before the end of this school year. It was agreed that schools would create their own assessments this year, but that next year we would work on getting a consistent assessment across all middle schools. For this year, some schools are creating a performance task assessment and some are creating an assessment on Inspect. All agreed that we would share what we created with the other middle schools. Steve will try to get release time for the teachers to work on this task.
A pathway was discussed and agreed upon. Regular students would experience C1, C2, and C3 in 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. The advanced path would have part of C1 and C2 in 6th grade, part of C2 and C3 in 7th grade, and Algebra 1 in 8th grade. The goal would be to start this next year with the common core standards. Several teachers have already started writing course descriptions for these classes. As the descriptions are completed they will come to this subcommittee for review and editing suggestions. This committee would have the final acceptance of the course descriptions before they go on to the full CAC for approval and to the board for acceptance. It was pointed out that the writing of the Algebra 1 course must be done by the high school, but middles school teachers could be involved in that course description process through the high schools.
* Some teacher concerns and Other.
A teacher not present had submitted concerns. It was decided to table that discussion until that teacher could be present.
Next Meeting - MS Math Subcommittee - April 14, 2015
Other Meetings - HS Math Subcommittee -
Elementary Math Subcommittee - April 13th
CAC At Large - May 11, 2015